Demons Background

Demons Background

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Written by Aleksei Marchyn

Demons is the sixth novel written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and published in 1871-1872. It’s one of the most politicized novels, which Dostoevsky wrote under the impression from the occurrence of shoots of the terrorist and radical movements among the Russian intellectuals and people not of noble birth. The immediate prototype of the plot of the novel was Ivan Ivanov, a murdered a student, whose case caused a great resonance in society and was planned by S. G. Nechayev in order to strengthen his power in the revolutionary terrorist group. The novel reflects the phenomenon of political life of the country that struck all people - "Nechaevism".

Dostoevsky conceived not so much work on the topic of the day, which he planned to finish soon. In the spring of 1870 Dostoevsky wrote that he strongly hoped about the thing he was working on at the moment, as he had so much to tell, even though the artistic side of the novel would suffer, there were things that accumulated in my mind and heart. He was going to say out, even if a novel would be considered as a pamphlet.

The idea and the plot of the work were considerably complicated in the process of writing. Polemics of hero-ideologists continued the line started back in the novel Crime and Punishment. Demons has become one of the most important works of Dostoevsky – a novel-prediction, a novel-warning.

Demons is included in a number of Russian anti-nihilistic novels, in which the ideas of a ​​left-wing are critically analyzed, including atheistic ones, that occupied the minds of the youth of that time. Verhovensky, Shatov, Stavrogin and Kirillov became four main protagonists of the political wing in the book. The novel was made into a movie in 1988, 1992, 2006 and 2014 (two times) years.